10 Million People Could Do It

In my previous post, I claimed that it couldn't be done. Well, I was wrong.

One person could examine every (30 generation) ancestral line in 34 years, giving each line one second.

But, 10 million people could accomplish the same task in less than two minutes.

That's one dimension of the solution.

The other one is that it's not really 2 billion ancestors in a family tree, but 2 billion places or roles: Father, Mother, Paternal Grandfather, etc. We could represent, or name, these places with simple strings:

F and M
FF, FM, MF and MM
FFF, FFM, FMF, FMM, MFF, MFM, MMF and MMM

and so on. These are isomorphic to the binary strings that I constructed in an earlier post about the "Powers of two."

As a more intense example, in my family tree there is an ancestor at position FFMMMFFFFFFFFFFMMFFFMMMMMFFMFF, who happens to be William the Conqueror. I would be very surprised if this illustrious gentleman didn't pop up in at least one other place in my family tree.

The point is that sometimes the same person will be found at more than one place, playing more than one role in the same family tree. If my son were to marry one of my third cousins, his children would find that the person in position FFFMMF (Caspar Witsch) might be the exact same person as the one in position MxxxF (again, Caspar Witsch). This cuts out a huge section of his or her the family tree.

Replace each "x" with one of "F" for father or "M" for mother. I'm not going to say precisely which family of third cousins he might marry into! To his children, I will occupy position FF. Everyone descended from position FFF is either me or one of my sisters. Everyone descended from FFFM is one of my (paternal) cousins, from FFFMM a second cousin, and from FFFMMF a third cousin. From my hypothetical grandchild's point of view, all of my third cousins are descended from individuals in positions FFxxxx (of which there are 16 possible; in other words, any one of my great-great grandparents). The grandchild's mother, being one of my third cousins is a great-great grandaughter of one of these 16 people. This would make the child both a 3rd great grandchild and a 4th great grandchild of Caspar Wintsch--his or her own fourth cousin once removed.

Getting back to the work at hand, if we combined the family trees of all of the 10 million people, chances are really good that they would have a lot in common. My sisters' family trees are identical to mine. My cousins' (and nephews') family trees are half the same as mine, and so on.

How many people have lived in the world since the year 1000? Let's suppose 20 billion lived in the areas from which the 10 million people drew their 30 generations of ancestors.

So, these 10 million people have no more than 20 billion distinct ancestors shared among them. If we spread out the work, each ancestor could be contemplated for one second in under an hour.

But, one second isn't very much time to devote to another human life.

What if we wanted to see that each of the 20 billion ancestors got 3 whole hours of the undivided attention of one of our 10 million workers. The 60 billion hours, split 10 million ways, would require 6,000 hours of each worker's time. A full-time work-year contains 8 hours per day times 250 days per year, or 2,000 hours. So, if we could convince each of our 10 million workers to devote 3 years of full-time work, every person who ever lived could get 3 hours of attention. And the 10 million people could still take off nights, weekends, holidays and some vacation time.

So, it could be done, after all, if only we could convince 10 million people that it is that important.

It can't be done

In my last post, I showed an ancestral line from William the Conqueror all the way to my grandfather.

Here is another ancestral line from a contemporary of William down to my grandfather. It was chosen more or less at random from 64 possible ancestral lines leading to Margred Verch Llywelyn, and from there this line is the same as the first one.

Iwerydd Verch CYNFYN             1024
Owain Ap EDWIN                   1044
Angharad Verch OWAIN             1065
Susanna Verch GRUFFYDD           1095
Margred Verch MADOG              1129
Llewelyn Ap IORWERTH             1173
Margred Verch Llywelyn           1210
Maud de Clifford                 1234
Eleanor Giffard                  1275
Elizabeth le Strange             1308
Roger Corbet                     1330
Robert Corbet                    1383
Roger Corbet                     1412
Anne Corbet                      1438
Blanche Sturry                   1472
Thomas Whitcomb                  1502
William Whitcomb                 1528
John Whitcomb                    1558
John Whitcomb                    1588
Johnathan Whitcomb               1628
Johnathan Whitcomb               1669
Johnathan Whitcomb               1690
William Whitcomb                 1719
Oliver Whitcomb                  1749
Oliver Whitcomb                  1772
Hannah Whitcomb                  1806
Lucinda Haws                     1828
Mary Elizabeth Holdaway          1856
Arthur Marion Conrad             1882

There are 268,435,456 ancestral lines of 28 generations (2 raised to the power 28). Counting ancestral lines from around 1000 AD down to myself there are well over a billion -- 268,435,456 for each of my four grandparents.

I don't think it is particularly easy to understand just how many lines this makes. But, a simple calculation will convince you that, if you set yourself the task of contemplating each one of the ancestral lines of 30 generations for just one second each, it would take you just over 34 years to complete the task.

And, if you wanted to go back another 300 years (10 generations) on each line, you would need 34,000 years to contemplate each line for one second. Oh, wait. Let's give you credit for the 34 years you have already spent. That leaves you a mere 33,966 years to go!

Well, that's one reason it can't be done.

Mercifully, there are not enough surviving records to complete the research going back 30 generations. And, of course, that's another reason it can't be done.

So far, I've found about 10 lines that go back that far, meaning that I am one millionth of a percent done with my genealogy research.

Still, it's a fun hobby. Fits right in with my fascination with time.

Related to Royalty

Yesterday, while digging through published Genealogies, I discovered that I am descended from royalty.

Here is a list, from parent to child, showing approximate birth year for each:

William I the Conqueror King of England  1027
Henry I "Beauclerc" King Of England      1068
Matilda (Maud) Empress Of Germany        1102
Henry II "Plantagenet" King Of England   1133
John "Lackland" King of England          1166
Joan Princess of England                 1188
Margred Verch Llywelyn                   1210
Maud de Clifford                         1234
Eleanor Giffard                          1275
Elizabeth le Strange                     1308
Roger Corbet                             1330
Robert Corbet                            1383
Roger Corbet                             1412
Anne Corbet                              1438
Blanche Sturry                           1472
Thomas Whitcomb                          1502
William Whitcomb                         1528
John Whitcomb                            1558
John Whitcomb                            1588
Johnathan Whitcomb                       1628
Johnathan Whitcomb                       1669
Johnathan Whitcomb                       1690
William Whitcomb                         1719
Oliver Whitcomb                          1749
Oliver Whitcomb                          1772
Hannah Whitcomb                          1806
Lucinda Haws                             1828
Mary Elizabeth Holdaway                  1856
Arthur Marion Conrad                     1882

I am a grandson of Arthur Conrad, and thus a 24th great-grandson of King John--the King John of Magna Carta fame.

This discovery is somewhat tempered by some realizations:

1. The descent is through Joan, who was an illegitimate daughter (although she married and became Princess of Wales, and later got Pope Honorius III to declare her birth legitimate).
2. King John must have millions and millions of descendants by now.
3. Although he was an innovator in some ways (ex. the Pipe Rolls), he had many disagreeable traits, and was recently selected as the "worst Briton" of his century.

Last year, in "Powers of two," I wrote about large numbers. These happen to apply in genealogy, for each of us has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc.

So, by the time you reach William the Conqueror, my 28th great-grandfather, there are well over two billion ancestors in my family tree. In particular, William the Conqueror is only one of nearly 550 million 28th great-grandfathers (and an equal number of 28th great-grandmothers).

I don't know how many people were living in western Europe back then, but I doubt that it was anywhere near a billion. So, it doesn't seem very unlikely that one of them in particular was a progenitor.

On Trusting the Internet

The other day, I was doing some JavaScript coding, and needed to find an element in the HTML document. Don't worry if you don't understand the technical details--the message of this post does not depend on them.

I remembered that there was a way to find an element by its identifier (or "id" for short), so I did a quick google of "findelementbyid" (which is what I remembered it being called) and got a whole bunch of results. The second one on the results list even included the excerpt, "FindElementById has yet to fail me" which sounded very reassuring.

However, it did fail me. Hmph!

I turned to my trusty reference book on JavaScript and there was no "findelementbyid" in the index. Very curious. So, I turned to "document" in the reference section and it wasn't listed there either. Curiouser and curiouser.

However, in the reference section, there was a mention of "getelementbyid".

Aha!

Why did I trust the Internet?

I've just done a comparison, and a google of "findelementbyid" returns only 556 results (YMMV) which, in retrospect is awfully small.

Sure enough, a google of "getelementbyid" returns "about 5,410,000" results. (Again, YMMV.)

The moral of the story: exercise care when using the Internet as an authority.

Mourning Great-Great-Grandmother

Over the past week, I've been studying the life of my Great-Grandmother, Anna Caroline Wintsch Muhlestein.

Our family has copies of a few pages of her life story that she wrote in later life. I assume that this came from her "Autobiographical sketch, 166-68, in Histories and biographies written by members of Camp Sunflower, Daughters of Utah Pioneers of Center Utah County, Provo, Utah, vol. 1." (available at the Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah). (See this link.)

Another version of the story was posted on the Internet in 1999 by, presumably, one of my fourth cousins. I found this while waiting for Andrew to bring me a paper copy of the story that has been in our family for years.

Even though I had read both of these stories before, a funny thing happened while I was reading the story out loud to Sara.

Warning: plot spoiler follows. If you want to read the story yourself first, you ought to do so right now, before reading on in this blog.

You've been warned.

I was reading along, just past the point where Anna's older brother Jacob, dies and is buried in Florence, Nebraska. Then, as I got to the point where Anna's mother unexpectedly dies after saying goodbye to her children, I got all choked up. I even cried out, "No! I don't want this to happen." Sara and I were both crying, to learn of the mother's death.

The strange thing is, she actually died long before either of us was born. And, I had even read the story before. What a strange reaction.

Empathy, I suppose, for Anna, her brother and sister, and especially her father, who had lost his father, a brother, two step-fathers and several step-siblings, his mother, his oldest son, his first wife, twin baby boys, and a grandson by that point in time.

Time is a strange thing.